To introduce economic benefits for health systems without compromising quality of care: The challenge of the PSYCHE approach is to introduce a new paradigm to cope the mental disease by reducing the healthcare costs.

The social impact of personalised monitoring systems based on wearable technology starts from a better possible diagnosis, due to the fact that patients live their daily life and are not perturbed psychologically by the hospital environment, up to saving economic resources by the efficient monitoring of risk subjects, the continuous control of therapy effectiveness in the daily life environment of the patient, the reduction in hospitalization costs.

In the 2005 study “Costs of Disorders of the Brain in Europe” there are estimates of epidemiological and health economics data. The economic costs of disease are subdivided in: direct healthcare costs (goods and services used in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of the disease, e.g. costs for medical visits, hospitalization and pharmaceuticals); direct private and public non-medical costs (all other resource use related to a disease, for example transportation, social services, adaptations of accommodations etc.); indirect costs (defined as the value of the income that is lost because people with a certain illness are impaired and too ill to work, so limits on work capability, absenteeism and early retirement).

The total annual cost of brain disorders in Europe was estimated to € 386 billion in 2004. Direct medical expenditures alone totalled € 135 billion, comprising inpatient stays (€ 78 billion), outpatient visits (€ 45 billion) and drug costs (€ 13 billion). Attributable indirect costs resulting from lost workdays and productivity loss because of permanent disability caused by brain disorders and mortality were € 179 billion, of which the mental disorders are the most prevalent. Direct non-medical costs (social services, informal care and other direct costs) totalled € 72 billion. Mental disorders amounted to € 240 billion and hence constitute 62% of the total cost (excluding dementia).But the scarcity or lack of both epidemiological and health economic data in several countries have led to conservative assessment of costs. Together with the restriction of the study to the most prevalent brain disorders this leads to the conclusion, that the true economic cost of disorders of the brain is substantially higher than this estimate of € 386 billion, perhaps in the range € 500–700 billion.